Albert II

My last server was doomed, and its planned replacement did not work out as planned. Something hat to be done quickly. What i just had around where parts for a planned cheap gaming machine: Mainboard, 4th gen Core i3, RAM, Case and PSU. Everything but the board came from a broken machine which I salvaged from the trash pile at work. The board was smoked, and i just had bought a new old one. A quick test showed that the system was using about 22W on idle. And that was that.I ripped the HDD from the cubie as well as the SSD, HDD and Arduino-IO-Thing from the ditched Xbox86-project and shoved all of it into the new thing, prodded the already installed Devuan Linux until it did (mostly) what i wanted and called it a day.

Noname ATX desktop PC (Gigabyte H81M-D2W)

i3-4330

2*2048MB DDR3

Samsung 850 Series EMT01B6Q

Western Digital WD5000BEVT-0

Toshiba DT01ABA300

Western Digital WD2002FYPS-0

Compex WLE600VX (Atheros QCA9882)

RTL 8111E

Arduino Nano

DS18B20, 433MHz Transceiver, 2 Relays

iPazzPort Apache TM

Display (panel from LG LE50, LVDS/VGA adaptor from Ebay)

Scrapmade speaker

Devuan Linux

Arduin-IO-Thing

As common desktop mainboards lack accessible GPIO's i use an Arduino nano clone over serial as a crude replacement. I need (or want) control of relays, RF transceiver, sensors and such stuff.

Console

Traditionally, my server also serves as a bedside media station. It saves energy (the server is running anyway, playing Video or not does not affect its consumption much) and is very convenient (again, the server is raunning anyway, so no booting).I have a small display made out of a 15" notebook-panel and a LVDS-VGA adaptor from Ebay and one of those cheap, really tiny wireless keyboard-touchpad combos. The Display is powered from the server directly, and is switched by one of the relays.

Wifi

This is only the third Wifi Card i am using in one of my servers. Atheros AR5001X+ in 2006, Atheros AR9271 in 2013 and now Atheros QCA9882. Each one the result of some research to find a card with decent Linux support with open source drivers. Not easy, especially if one wants "newer" tech: in 2006 the troublemaker was 54Mbs, in 2013 150Mbs and in 2017 the "new" 5ghz band (well, and 540Mbs).If you are in need of such a card, have a look at WikiDevi's page on 802.11ac devices. Neat.